Events from the year 1880 in art.

• October – Vincent van Gogh enrolls in a beginners art course at the Académie Royale des Beaux-Arts in Brussels.
• Fifth Impressionist exhibition in Paris, at 10 rue des Pyramides.^[1] The realist painter Jean-François Raffaëlli is also invited by Degas to exhibit.
• Silver Studio founded by Arthur Silver in London for textile and wallpaper design.
• Anton Mauve paints Changing Pasture; his palette and usage of colour influences Vincent van Gogh.
• Michael Ancher marries fellow painter Anna Brøndum.
• National Gallery of Canada established in Ottawa.

• Grand Prix de Rome, painting: Henri Lucien Doucet.
• Grand Prix de Rome, sculpture:
• Grand Prix de Rome, architecture:
• Grand Prix de Rome, music: Lucien Joseph Edouard Hillemacher.

• Frédéric Auguste Bartholdi – The Lion of Belfort
• Marie Bashkirtseff – Self-portrait
• Arnold Böcklin – Isle of the Dead (German: Die Toteninsel, first two versions)
• Marie Bracquemond – On the terrace at Sèvres
• Thomas Brock – A Moment of Peril (equestrian bronze)
• Lady Butler – The Defence of Rorke's Drift
• Alexandre Cabanel – Phèdre
• Gustave Caillebotte
  • A Balcony
  • Boulevard des Italiens
  • Boulevard Seen from Above
  • The Bezique Game
  • In a Café
  • Interior
  • Interior, or Woman reading
  • A refuge, boulevard Haussmann
  • Man on the balcony, boulevard Haussmann
  • Man with a top-hat, seated by a window
  • Nude on a divan
• Paul Cézanne – View of Auvers-sur-Oise
• Carl Conrads - Statue of Alexander Hamilton (granite)
• Pierre Auguste Cot - The Storm
• Alphonse-Marie-Adolphe de Neuville – The Defence of Rorke's Drift, 1879
• Edgar Degas – Mary Cassatt at the Louvre: The Etruscan Gallery (etching)
• Thomas Eakins – The Fairman Rogers Four-in-Hand
• Giovanni Fattori – Quadrato di Villafranca
• Charles Gauthier – Cléopâtre (plaster)
• James Clarke Hook – Home with the Tide
• Daniel Huntington – Portrait of John Adams Dix
• Ivan Kramskoi
  • Sergey Botkin
  • Ivan Shishkin
• Edward Lear – The Plains of Lombardy from Monte Generoso (Ashmolean Museum, Oxford)
• Édouard Manet
  • Émilie Ambre as Carmen
  • A Bundle of Asparagus
  • A Sprig of Asparagus
• Albert Joseph Moore – Rose Leaves
• Adolph Alphonse de Neuville – The Defence of Rorke's Drift
• Frank O'Meara – Autumnal greys (Forest of Fontainbleau)
• William Quiller Orchardson – Napoleon on Board the Bellerophon
• Edward Poynter – A Visit to Aesculapius
• Pierre-Auguste Renoir
  • Portrait of Irène Cahen d'Anvers
  • By the Water
• Annie Robinson – Susan Isabel Dacre
• Dante Gabriel Rossetti – The Day Dream
• Fritz Schaper – Goethe Monument (Berlin)
• Viktor Vasnetsov – Flying Carpet
• Henry Tanworth Wells – Victoria Regina

• February 1 – C. T. Loo, Chinese-born art dealer (died 1957)
• February 3 – Frances Darlington, English relief sculpture (died 1940)
• February 8 – Franz Marc, German painter and printmaker, co-founder of Der Blaue Reiter (killed in action 1916)
• March 2 – Joseph Ehrismann, German-born painter and stained-glass maker (died 1937)
• March 21 – Hans Hofmann, German-born abstract expressionist painter and teacher (died 1966)
• April 4 – William Russell Flint, Scottish-born watercolourist (died 1969)
• April 7 – Alexander Bogomazov, Ukrainian painter, artist and modern art theoretician of Russian avant-garde (died 1930)
• May 6 – Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, German expressionist painter, co-founder of Die Brücke (suicide 1938)
• June 10 – André Derain, French Fauvist painter (died 1954)
• August 2 – Arthur Dove, American painter (died 1946)
• August 22 – George Herriman, American cartoonist (Krazy Kat) (died 1944)
• November 19 – Jacob Epstein, American-born British sculptor (died 1959)

• January 4 – Anselm Feuerbach, German classicist painter (born 1829)
• February 19 – Constantino Brumidi, American historicist fresco painter (born 1805)
• September 8 – Wilhelm August Rieder, Austrian painter and draughtsman (born 1796)
• October 10 – Giampietro Campana, Italian art collector (born 1808)
• November 20 – Léon Cogniet, French historical and portrait painter (born 1794)
• date unknown
  • Philippe Joseph Henri Lemaire, French sculptor (born 1798)
  • Henry O'Neill, Irish illustrator and antiquarian (born 1798)
  • Nicolae Teodorescu, Moldavian, later Romanian church painter (muralist) (born 1797)